Profile of a Balkan outsider
Goran Radovanovic offers an honest look inside Yugoslavia

Goran Radovanovich

"I was born in a country where art was always considered a revolutionary tool, something that could change the world. For me, satire became the tool with which I observed social phenomena". Combining satire with razor-sharp political commentary, Yugoslavian Goran Radovanovic is probably one of the most prolific Balkan documentary filmmakers today.

Born in Belgrade, Radovanovic first worked as a film critic. Before long, his scripts were turned into a feature and a TV film. In the 1990's he started making documentaries on current social and political issues and worked closely with independent media.

Coming from a fiction filmmaking background, Radovanovic approaches the documentary form as simply another way to tell a story. "After the war there was no work in film, so I switched to cheaper formats and started making documentaries". With his own production company, Principal Film, he created more than 20 public service announcements about the democratisation of Serbia between 1998 and 1999.

His films have a collage quality to them, as Radovanovic often blends and contrasts sources; in one scene, he might put a Serbian media message side-by-side with ordinary people’s analysis of it. He’s less interested in polished images, than in telling a story that blends serious material and satire. His films feature a very particular sense of humour and an intelligent perspective on daily life and recent history.

Although his documentaries have been shown in festivals around the world and have gathered many awards, they have never been shown in his own country, with the exception of "OTPOR: The Fight to Save Serbia". For that reason, Radovanovic considers himself "a social outsider" who has no influence on the current events in his country.

His documentaries include:

COLUMBA URBICA (1994) - Belgrade, 1994. At the bottom of a medieval fortress, right in the city centre, Jasar, a Gypsy, lives in an illegal shanty without water or electricity. A loaf of bread costs three and a half billion dinars! Garbage bins and city dumps have become the source of sustenance for many citizens of Belgrade. The competition around those garbage bins is becoming more and more fierce. Can the city's pigeons provide enough calories for Jasar's emaciated stomach?

SECOND CIRCLE (1997) - Using a kaleidoscope of images and formats, Radovanovic's "Second Circle" focuses on the lives of individuals surviving on the margins of society. We watch a young woman responding to ads for housekeepers and being turned down just because she happens to be a Gypsy. In another story, a homeless man is eating out of garbage cans, while a voice-over describes - with a gourmand's delight - how to create a nutritious meal.

My Country

MY COUNTRY (1999) - In "My Country" Goran Radovanovic uses a mixture of genres to present a disturbing picture of a country destroyed by war, nationalism and poverty. Throughout the film, we witness the country’s great problems, which prevent peace and democracy from taking place in Serbia.

MODEL HOUSE (2000) - "Model House" is a satirical quasi-documentary about the lack of proper housing afforded to the refugee Serbs from Croatia who are living in exile in Serbia. A woman’s narrative is juxtaposed with scenes from the NATO bombing, visuals of dingy refugee camps, excerpts from state television broadcasts spewing propaganda and Slobodan Milosevic’s voice saying: "All must be sacrificed for the people, except the people."

OTPOR: THE FIGHT TO SAVE SERBIA (2001) - This documentary follows OTPOR, a small student-led grassroots movement that fought for free media and fair elections. Without leaders or any structure, the OTPOR movement spread throughout the country and became a peoples’ movement and the greatest threat to Yugoslavia's tyrant Milosevic.

It follows OTPOR from its early days to when it become the national symbol of resistance: the clenched fist. Radovanovic explains: "Using populist methods of fighting against the regime, the OTPOR youth signified the ‘future’ for many people". The movement employed true grassroots style methods, graffiti, street protests, rock concerts, and very popular slogans such as "KILL YOURSELF SLOBO AND SAVE SERBIA" and "HE'S FINISHED!" Soon after the collapse of the Milosevic regime, the OTPOR movement no longer had political influence. The filmmaker says, "There was no place for a new populist party in a newly-born democracy".

"Casting" bares it all

CASTING (2003) – One of the Balkan Survey gems at November’s 44th Thessaloniki Film Festival. The director offers a slice of life of Serbia by setting up and filming "auditions" for a lingerie ad. Along the way, he probes everyday life in his country. The people who respond are ordinary and unusual, desperate and pragmatic. Memorable are a young woman who poses for her slick boyfriend’s porn magazine and a sweet diabetic whose family must scrounge the city for insulin. They range in physique and lifestyle, offering a powerful statement through humour.

Radovanovic is now working on a fiction film "dedicated to the victims of the last totalitarian regime in Europe, using the traditional form of an Orthodox confession". He says: "I want to make a film which will start with the abolition of God and will end with people’s desperate need for religion".

Goran Radovanovic is determined to use the documentary form as another way of telling a story, the story of his country. "Forty years of lies and manipulation by Tito, then ten years of these nationalist and global lies, and we are now left with a country that is a tragedy. At least when I manipulate the material in my films, I am honest about it."

Eve Tsirigotakis

www.goranradovanovic.com
Radovanovic’s Website

http://www.fest.org.yu/
Belgrade International Film Festival